


end of the line

by fuckitfireeverything



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, College, Gen, nothing super major but there's definitely some, uhh yeah it's a future-fic that hypothetically fits into canon, warnings for violence and blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1607198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckitfireeverything/pseuds/fuckitfireeverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who the hell is Allison?"</p><p>or, the one in which Allison Argent is the Winter Soldier</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“On your left,” Stiles says, and Scott’s attention jerks back to the TV screen in front of him, to the explosion that fills half the screen and— and knocks out his character, his side of the screen graying out.

“Dude,” he says.

“Warned you,” Stiles answers, and then curses under his breath as his half of the screen goes gray as well. “Shoulda been paying attention, man.”

“We’ve been playing for six hours,” Scott says, putting his controller down and rubbing his eyes. “I can’t even see straight.”

“It’s a ‘finals-are-over suck-my-dick’ video game marathon, what did you expect?”

“You said there’d be pizza.”

“I also said we’d play GTA until our eyes bled. Last I checked my eyes aren’t bleeding yet, are yours? Pass the cheetos.”

“Can we take a break?”

“I thought your werewolf superpowers were supposed to give you halfway decent stamina.”

“Stiles, this is inhuman. No one can play video games for this long.”

“Sure we can! We do it every semester.” Stiles grunts as he reaches across the bed for the half-empty bag of cheetos, straining a little when he can’t reach them. “Last summer you had a 300-win streak on Street Fighter.”

“Stiles—”

“You’re just distracted.”

“No.”

“Yeah. You are. You’re totally distracted because Kira gets home tonight and you’re scared of what’s going to happen when you see her again. I get it, man, you’re still wounded and all, but don’t let it cut into bro-time, okay?”

He’s not wrong, Scott has to admit. It’s been three months since he and Kira talked, four since they broke up. Sure, they decided they’d be friends; sure, it was mutual. But they were both back in Beacon Hills for three and a half months before starting their senior years. How was long distance going to be an excuse for their break up when they were only a few miles apart for that long?

“Just ignore it, man,” Stiles says, licking cheeto dust off his fingers and picking up his controller again. “Ignore girl-problems and focus on the three-star wanted level I have and the fucking bomb-ass stunt I’m about to pull with these cops on my ass.”

Scott sighs. Maybe Stiles is right, maybe it is stupid to worry about it. Maybe Kira will get back and things will be totally not weird. But he can’t remember what being friends with Kira was like, not after four years of dating, not after hardly being friends before they started, especially when everything was so chaotic when they got together. Kira feels like the calm in a storm, like an anchor. Kira feels like home.

You have to be your own anchor, his mom had told him once. And she was right. But he’d gotten so used to someone else being his home again, gotten used to the feeling of kissing her again after months apart while they were at college, gotten used to his first thought driving past the Beacon Hills city limit being her. 

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. He wants to talk it over, if he’s being honest, he wants advice. But Stiles wants video games until his eyes bleed and junk food for days and, well, Stiles has had such a rough semester that Scott can hardly begrudge him that. 

“You going to help or you going to sit there like a chump?”

Scott doesn’t get the chance to answer because his phone buzzes on the bed, and he’s hardly even answered it when the ambush begins.

“What about Stacy Hopkins?” Lydia’s voice rings through the phone.

“What?”

“It’s time, Scott,” she says. “I gave you four months. That’s more than I should have. Now I’m doing my job as your only real female friend and finding you a date. So, what about Stacy Hopkins?”

“Lydia—”

“Don’t Lydia me. No Stacy? Okay, what about Ellen Harding?”

“She’s dating Max Llewellyn,” Stiles interrupts, chewing on one of his nails, and Scott didn’t even know Stiles could hear what was happening on the other end of the phone. “I was facebook stalking her last night.”

“Oh, that won’t last,” Lydia replies sharply. “And neither will you and Danny,” she adds as an afterthought. “The enchantingly nerdy thing will wear off eventually.”

“You’ve been saying that since freshman year and yet here we are,” Stiles 

“Uh-huh. Sure you are, sweetheart.”

“I thought you weren’t back yet,” Scott manages, between them.

“Just got off the plane,” Lydia says cheerfully. “And on my way to Stiles’ house to pick you up.”

“But it’s our bi-annual ‘finals-are-over suck-my-dick’ video game marathon!” Stiles squeaks, but Scott can already hear the breaks of Lydia’s Toyota as she pulls into the driveway.

He groans and hangs up the phone, knowing there’s no talking her out of this, and Stiles lets out an equally resigned sigh before leaning over to turn off his Xbox. 

“We’re not ordering pizza until she’s gone,” Stiles says. “And if she spirits you away I’m just going to reschedule, you can’t get out of this.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Scott says.

“Not with an attitude like that you’re not,” Lydia says, pushing the door to Stiles’ bedroom open.

“I knew I shouldn’t have give you a key,” Stiles grumbles, grabbing the bag of cheetos and stuffing his mouth.

“You’re appalling, Stilinski,” she says, but she’s smiling, ruffling Stiles’ hair as she makes her way into the room.

“Haven’t broken MIT yet?” Stiles answers.

“Only a little,” she says, sitting next to him and carefully selecting a cheeto from the bag before turning to Scott again.

“I promised Stiles we’d marathon video games all night,” he says, the only excuse he can come up with.

“Scott,” she says. “I’m only the expert at getting over bad breakups. Trust me. You need this.”

“Wasn’t a bad breakup,” Scott says. “We’re friends. It was just the distance thing. It’s fine.”

“Or, that was her excuse for not wanting to date you anymore. And if you go see her now, she’s going to tell you she has no desire to be friends with you and you’re going to feel stupid and mope all summer. And we can’t have that. None of us need a mopey werewolf on our hands. I’ve got a thesis to start and Stiles, apparently, has more important video games to play.”

“More important than a blind date, yeah. Every man knows that there is no broken heart that cannot be repaired by copious amounts of junk food and video games. It’s like a law of the universe.”

“I’m not heartbroken,” Scott interrupts. 

“Of course you are, honey,” Lydia says, sitting next to him. “You look like a drowned puppy. A very hot drowned puppy, of course, but still pretty pathetic.”

“I’m not pathetic!”

“This isn’t a debate,” she says primly, crossing her legs. She’s begun picking at the coat of lilac polish on her nails, her lips pursed together. “The only choice you get in the matter is which of the long list of eligible girls I’ve picked out for you to date. Do I need to get out my notebook?”

Stiles laughs. “What is this, Lydia, a shopping spree?”

She hums. “Something like that.”

“What he needs,” Stiles counters, “is bro-time. It’s as simple as that. Nothing makes a guy forget about girls like blowing shit up.”

“Maybe if you’re seven,” Lydia says. She leans back and rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry, Scott, but we all know you’re not great with breakups. I’m only doing what’s best for you.”

“She has a point. You still have a tattoo to remember the last one by.”

Scott’s hand goes automatically to his bicep, right over where he knows the black bands encircle his arm. “I like my tattoo,” he says, and it’s a lame defense but it’s the truth. He wouldn’t trade the memories he has for anything in the world. 

Except…

No, he tells himself. It’s not possible.

“No offense,” Stiles says.

“I like my tattoo,” Scott repeats, and he can feel the raised lines of the bands where he’s touching the skin. It’s still a reminder, after all this time. After years, he still looks at it in the mirror every morning and thinks about her, if only for just a second. About the girl who risked her life for him, the first girl he ever loved. A mark on his skin to match the mark on his heart.

“Scott?” Lydia says carefully, after a minute that Scott hasn’t realized he’s been silent for.

“Stacy Hopkins sounds great,” he says. “No, you know what? Yeah. Stacy Hopkins sounds nice. Just. Another night, okay Lydia? My mom’s working late, I promised I’d bring her dinner.”

“Scott…” Stiles echoes her, softly, but Scott is already picking up his stuff and heading for the door. Heading home.

 

. . . 

 

As Derek pats the pockets of his leather jacket, searching for his keys, something — some sense, some warning — pricks at the back of his neck. He stops, still and silent, listening closely for any rustle or sound behind him, inhaling to catch any stray, unusual scent. There is nothing. Just the garbage from the dumpster in the corner of the lot, just the electric hum from the building’s generator. Just the normal scent of gasoline and tar, the normal city sounds down the street. Just the summer scent of heat and smoke and ash. 

But something feels wrong. 

He takes a deep breath before finding his keys and getting into the car, locking the doors around him. 

Careful, he thinks, but pulls out of the parking lot anyway and makes a left onto the street, heading north out of town. 

It’s dark, late, and the streetlights on the road he’s on are old and dim, in need of replacing. Not that anyone takes care of this part of town, all abandoned buildings and derelict warehouses. The perfect place to hide out when you need to lie low.

But perhaps not the best place to be pursued by some unknown, invisible force.

As he gets towards the outskirts of Beacon Hills proper, he notices that fog has started to drift onto the road from the woods. The pricking at the back of his neck is only getting worse. 

He stops at a red light, and the lone streetlight that illuminates the intersection flickers. 

Flickers and dies.

He growls under his breath, turning on his brights to see the road in front of him, but something in the engine clicks and suddenly his headlights have gone out, too. Like there’s something sucking all the light out of the intersection. At least, all the light but the red of the stoplight. 

He blinks, his eyes going bright blue, and looks out to try to see the road in the dark.

And there, rising from a crouch cloaked in fog, all black and red in the shadow of the stoplight, is a figure. A lithe figure dressed in all black, a mask over their face, aiming a crossbow directly at him. 

Ignoring the stoplight, he puts his foot to the gas, but the car sputters around him like something is holding it in place. The engine revs, squeals, and dies. He leans down a little, trying the key in the ignition again, with no luck.

And then the windshield shatters, a bolt straight through the glass directly where his head had been a second before.

He scrambles out of the car, claws and fangs growing out as he ducks behind the door like a shield, and the figure is walking towards him, slow and confident, aiming another bolt straight for his head.

The window shatters, this time, and he ducks just seconds before it hits him, and the figure is still moving, dropping the crossbow to the ground and pulling two knives out of thigh holsters. 

Derek roars, and the figure rips the car door straight off its hinges with a left arm that glints silver in the red light. As the door hits the ground, Derek lunges for the figure, tackling it. He raises his claws to attack once they’re on the ground, but before he can move his arms, the figure is gone, rolling back and away, back to its feet, flipping its grip on the knife and coming at him again while he’s still prone.

He barely manages to roll away before there’s a knife in the pavement where his chest had just been, and the figure must have grazed his arm because his sleeve is torn and wet and warm.

He springs back to his feet, claws bared, and squares off against the hunter.

They keep low to the ground, crouched and patient, just waiting for him to make a move, and he waits for an opening in their slow, careful, confident movements. He can barely hear their footsteps or the sound of their breath. Cloaked in black, all he can see is the silver arm and the reflection of their watchful eyes. 

The hunter has no weak spots, no hesitations. 

It’s hardly a minute before Derek realizes the best he can hope to do here is survive. 

He takes a step back, and suddenly he’s on the ground, his feet knocked out from under him, a blade to his throat. He grabs the hunter’s arm, the right arm, the flesh one, covered in worn leather, and twists, forcing them off of him to the side, rolling to try to get above them. But even pinning the hunter’s arm to the ground, he has no advantage. The hunter kicks him square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and pushing him back.

Somehow, he manages to land on his feet, but he hardly has time to orient himself before there’s a metal arm around his throat, a knife buried up under his shoulder blade, and he’s mostly lost feeling in both arms now as he struggles to throw them off.

The hunter moves too fast to process. He can barely feel them knock him to the ground again, and he’s already feeling too sluggish — from blood loss or something else — to push himself back up before they follow him to the ground.

The hunter has him pinned now, and he struggles to throw them off but can’t seem to get any kind of leverage, and all he can see are dark, hollow, empty eyes and the flash of silver — silver arm holding silver blade — and there’s a sharp pain in his chest that spreads like a burning and then jerks, just as sharp, down and into his lungs, his stomach. He lets out a strangled groan, trying to throw the hunter off, and collapses onto his forearms as the hunter slides back, stands up, and wipes off the blade before turning to go.

When the hunter is completely out of sight, Derek is amazed to find he’s still breathing. 

Breathing, but not healing. 

“Wolfsbane,” he mutters, wincing as he traces the cuts with his fingers, presses on them to try to stop the bleeding. The knives must have been coated in it, somehow, and his flesh feels like it’s burning outwards from the wounds, pain radiating up his arm and down his chest, and he can only think of one person who could have appeared and disappeared like that, one person with blades that burn like fire, and it’s a person he’s only ever heard rumors of. Rumors from Peter, rumors from Cora, rumors in the letters he’s been sending for help.

He needs help.

He needs Scott.


	2. Chapter 2

Scott’s halfway home when his phone rings. 

It’s not his normal ringtone. It’s a horrible quality midi-version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” that his roommate found one day when Scott had accidentally left his phone in the room, and it only plays when one person calls.

He thinks about not answering it. That’s what Stiles would tell him to do: ignore it, pretend he’s busy, pretend he has better things to do than talk to her. He’s supposed to be playing video games until his eyes bleed anyway, stuffing his mouth with junk food. No phones, no girls, just bro time. There’s no reason to make anyone suspect otherwise. 

Or, he could wait it out, answer it just before it goes to voicemail. That’s what Lydia would tell him to do: be cool, be casual, pretend you don’t care without being unavailable. Give her the chance to make the first move.

Instead, he does neither, answering it just seconds after it starts to ring, and he could kick himself afterwards, realizing it probably sounds like he was waiting for her to call.

“Kira,” he says, his voice higher than he means it to be, “hey, hi, how are you? How was the drive? Are you back from school?”

There’s a pause on the other end, and Scott would bang his head against a wall if there was a wall to use. 

“Hi, Scott,” she says after a minute, her voice light and bright like he remembers it, but hesitant. 

He waits for her to go on, but after a minute when it doesn’t seem like she’s going to, he ventures, “So, um. What’s up?”

“Oh,” she says, like something had distracted her, like she’d forgotten she was on the phone. “Nothing. I mean. I just got back into town.”

“Oh,” Scott echoes. “That’s… good? How was the drive?”

He feels awkward. It’s not the first time they’ve talked since they broke up, but it feels like it. He doesn’t know what to say anymore, afraid of sounding uncomfortable but equally afraid of sounding too casual, too close to what they used to be, how they used to talk. The familiarity, the jokes, the fondness.

“It was fine,” Kira says. “Look… I’m sorry for calling you like this… I know we said we weren’t going to do this…”

“It’s fine,” Scott says hurriedly.

“Can we talk?” she asks.

Scott’s heart nearly stops, and he takes a minute, fumbling for his keys before saying, “Um. We are talking?”

“In person,” she clarifies, and he unlocks his front door, pushes his way into the dark house.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh…”

But suddenly he’s distracted because something is wrong. Something is in the house, someone… He’s not alone. 

He can’t see them, not yet, but his senses are on full alert now, the claws of his free hand out. He stills his breath, quiet enough that he can hear the ragged breath in the next room. Can smell blood and something worse, something sour and sharp, something that makes his lungs burn with the sense-memory of suffocation: wolfsbane.

“Scott?” Kira repeats on the phone, and he’d forgotten she was there on the other end, waiting for his reply. 

“Hm?” he says, trying to make as little noise as possible without making her give up and hang up on him as he rounds the corner into the kitchen, claws ready. 

“I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t really important, Scott.”

There’s someone sitting on the counter, the window open, and all he can see is their shadow in the moonlight coming in through the window, too distracted by Kira’s voice on the phone to really tell who it is.

And then the someone notices he’s there and looks up at him. He’d recognize that exasperated sigh, that pained grimace, that leather jacket anywhere. It’s Derek. 

He flips the lights on, half in relief, half in annoyance, mostly to reassure himself that he’s right, that it’s not some serial killer or evil alpha or magical demon here to steal his power or kill him.

“Scott, is this a bad time?”

“What?” he says. “No, no, this is a great time, this is fine.”

He watches as Derek tries to heave himself up off the counter and fails, nearly falling off, one bloodied hand catching himself on the edge of the counter, the other still desperately grasping his injured stomach. 

“It’s just… you seem distracted…”

“No, nope, not distracted, totally one hundred percent not—”

You’re starting to sound like Stiles, half of his brain notes casually as he lunges to catch Derek, who has gone even whiter, starting to tip over forward as his legs begin to give out.

He nearly drops the phone, but he manages to steady the wobbling Derek long enough to pull over a chair and scoot it under him before he falls into it, gasping and panting a little from the exertion.

Be quiet, he mouths in Derek’s direction, pointing at the phone. Derek grits his teeth, eyes wide with exasperation, and huffs out a breath, but Scott turns his attention back to the phone.

“Are you even listening to me?” Kira is saying, and Scott feels a guilty pang in his chest — he has no idea what she’s been saying. “Look, I get it, this is a bad time.”

“No, Kira…”

“No, you know what? This is a bad idea. I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Kira!” he says. “Stop, it’s not a bad idea, it’s okay. Just… can you give me like thirty seconds?”

He can practically see her sigh through the phone, the way he knows her mouth turns down slightly at the corners when she’s frustrated with him, how she’s probably got a section of her dark hair tangled absently around one finger while she waits for him.

“Okay,” she says, but there’s major reservation in her voice. 

He doesn’t want to waste his thirty seconds, so he goes to the cabinet under the sink, the one where his mom started keeping rags and bandages and disinfectant and wolfsbane for flushing wolfsbane out of wounds, and gets to work. He’s watched both her and Deaton enough times to know what to do: disinfect, add a little wolfsbane, cover with a rag until it’s out, then cover it til it heals. He tosses the necessaries one by one to Derek, phone still propped between his ear and his shoulder.

“Scott,” Derek says, his voice ragged and wrecked and just loud enough he’s scared Kira will hear over the phone. “We have to go.”

“Be quiet,” he whispers sharply.

“What?” Kira says. 

“Not you,” he replies hurriedly. “Sorry.”

“Okay,” she says, and then after a second, “look, Scott, if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s all you have to say.”

“Of course I want to talk to you,” he says, so fast he nearly trips over the words, so ungraceful and pathetic he imagines Lydia is probably rolling her eyes without knowing why. He stands up from the cabinet and takes a deep breath, ready to continue the conversation while Derek cleans himself up, but Derek isn’t in the chair anymore, he’s right next to him.

Somewhere safe, Derek mouths at him once he’s gotten Scott’s attention. 

Scott nods. There’s nowhere safer than this kitchen, he made sure of that before he left for college. Anything to keep his mom out of trouble.

But Derek grabs his arm, hard, pulling him close so Scott has no choice but to look at him, and see the awful condition he’s actually in. His face is deathly pale, his eyes glazing over. Scott hasn’t seen him in shape this bad in a long, long time. 

Not safe enough, Derek mouths.

Scott looks at him for a second, and then sighs.

“Kira, I’m really, really sorry, but I’m going to have to call you back.”

 

. . . 

He manages to drag Derek to the clinic, unlocking the back with the spare key Deaton never bothered to ask him to return, and Stiles intercepts them a few minutes later.

“Is this safe enough?” Scott asks, helping Derek up onto the table and motioning for Stiles to start dealing with the now-smoking wounds Derek didn’t bother to wash out before they left. “Can you talk here?”

Derek nods, grimacing still, and Stiles tosses Scott a syringe and a bottle of some analgesic lying on the counter.

“Good enough,” Derek says, and Scott isn’t sure whether it’s a response to the safety of their location or to the syringe Derek is grabbing from him and stabbing himself with unceremoniously, gasping slightly for air. 

Once his breathing has steadied, once Scott is certain he’s alright, Scott says, “What the _hell_ was that?”

“I’m being followed,” Derek says. “Couldn’t risk explaining it to you when they might have been listening.”

“Who?” Scott asks, confused. “Who is ‘they?’”

Derek just swallows and shakes his head. 

“Whoever attacked you?”

“No,” Derek says. 

Scott leans against the counter, putting his head in his hands and taking a few breaths to steady himself. He couldn’t believe he’d hung up on Kira, just hung up on her like that, when she’d sounded so… worried? freaked out? He hadn’t even thought, while they were talking, of the almost frantic tone in her voice, like something was wrong aside from just the break up, the fact that they were back in Beacon Hills together for the first time since. 

She’d sounded on edge, he couldn’t have been imagining that. Something was off, in a way he hadn’t heard from her in a long time, not even when she called to initiate the talk that had ended in their break up, not even when he’d called her the next morning to make sure he hadn’t dreamed it. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just about them. 

“That’s it?” Stiles says, interrupting Scott’s thoughts. “No? That’s very helpful, thank you, Derek. Now we know exactly who you’re talking about.”

“Did you have to bring him?” Derek says, looking up at Scott, an eyebrow raised. “Really?”

Scott shrugs, a non-committal gesture that he hopes will shut up both of their bickering for long enough to get some idea of what the hell is going on. 

“Just tell me what happened,” he says, and shoots Stiles a glare that he hopes will come across. 

“I was attacked,” Derek says finally.

“Yeah, we got that.”

“Stiles,” Scott warns, and gestures for Derek to go on.

Derek sighs and begins: “I was leaving. On my way out of town, had some… stuff” (Scott sees Stiles roll his eyes dramatically behind Derek) “I was supposed to be doing. My car stalled and the streetlights went out and the next thing I knew… It was like an ambush, only— it was one person. One hunter. And they were unstoppable.”

Scott exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. Hunters were the last thing he thought he was going to have to cope with this break — break ups, sure, and Stiles’ boredom-induced stunts, and maybe studying for the comprehensive exams he was going to have to pass in less than a year, but not hunters. Anything but hunters. 

“I couldn’t lay a hand on them,” Derek continued after a minute, slowly, like it was hazy in coming back to him. “I’ve fought hunters before but never like this. It was inhuman.”

“Inhuman?”

“Not literally. Not a demon or anything, but… something was off. Something wasn’t right.”

“Like what?”

Derek thinks for a minute, closing his eyes, taking a few breaths, and then shakes his head. “They had a metal arm,” he says. “That’s all I could make out. A metal arm and a crossbow. Then they were gone.”

Scott looks at him, confused, waiting for an explanation.

“A metal arm?” Stiles says, suddenly interested. 

Derek just nods. 

“Like the Winter Solider?”

“Who?” Derek says, his face contorting into some painful-looking cross between angry and baffled as he turns to glare, annoyed, at Stiles.

“Bucky Barnes? The Winter Soldier? Captain America’s best friend? Come on, and you call yourself an American? You should be ashamed, Derek, really.”

Derek huffs. “This isn’t a comic book, I’m serious.”

Scott’s starting to regret bringing Stiles, isn’t even sure why he did except that he’d left his backpack at Stiles’, and the key to Deaton’s had been in the pocket of it instead of attached to his keychain like it usually was. 

“Stiles,” he warns again. 

Derek takes a second to glare at Stiles before he continues.

“I wasn’t doing anything. I was just driving. They came out of nowhere, like a shadow. I didn’t stand a chance. They were faster, stronger, almost invisible. Every move I made, the hunter—”

“Can we call him the Winter Hunter?” Stiles interrupts. “No, wait. That rhymes. Let’s stick with Winter Soldier. It’s cleaner.”

“We’re not calling him anything,” Scott says. And then, “So you’re telling me you got attacked by an unstoppable hunter with a metal arm in the middle of an intersection for no apparent reason?”

Derek nods.

“And you have no idea who it was?”

“Well…”

“Well?”

“There are stories,” Derek says carefully. “There… have been stories.”

“What?”

“Of a hunter with a silver arm, wiping out entire packs in Europe and South America over the last year or so. Big packs, major ones with histories of violence and loss of control. Areas with a history of major casualties swept clean of werewolves by a single shadowy figure no one can touch. It’s just rumors, no one really believes them, and no one has any proof. It’s like the hunter doesn’t exist. Most of us don’t believe they do. I didn’t until tonight.”

“But why would he be here?” Scott says. “Why Beacon Hills?” It doesn’t add up. Violence? Major casualties? There hadn’t been anything like that in Beacon Hills in years, he’d made sure of that before he left. He barely spends three months away from Beacon Hills at the most, there’s no time for major casualties, there’s no time for loss of control, not that he wouldn’t sense. 

Derek doesn’t answer. He’s looking off in the other direction, jaw clenched, elbows on his knees. He’s starting to look a little less pale, his wounds healing slower than usual, but healing. Healing and… hiding something, clearly, though Scott can’t figure out what. Something big, Scott can tell, from the look in Derek’s eye. 

Scott can feel the frustration building in his chest. “What aren’t you telling me?” he demands, almost a growl as he advances on Derek. 

“Nothing,” Derek says, hardly convincing, and Scott isn’t buying it.

“You came to me, Derek,” he says, crouching down next to him, meeting his eye. “You came to my house and you asked for my help. But I can’t help you if you’re lying to me.”

Derek holds his gaze for a minute.

“I just wanted you to have a shot at a normal life for a while,” he says, looking away. For a second he looks lost, like a guilty kid facing a disappointed parent. For a second, Scott wants to hug him.

“Aww,” Stiles says, shockingly sincere (and, Scott had nearly forgotten he was still standing there). “That’s… actually really nice of you, Der-bear.”

And the moment is gone, Derek’s expression gone sour again as he glares towards Stiles.

“You should stay out of it, Scott.” He says, getting up off the table, looking down to check his now-healed wounds. “It’ll be better for you that way.”

Before Scott can protest, before he can ask another question, Derek is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [kim](thecrepecraze.tumblr.com) for looking over this one for me
> 
> and thanks to everyone who left comments on the last chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

"What's his problem?" Stiles says as Derek leaves. "Is he just me, or has he gotten grumpier and more stubbornly mysterious with age?"

But Scott isn't listening. He's still thinking, still wondering: what has been going on without him here? What is Derek keeping from him? He's supposed to be the one to protect Beacon Hills, the nemeton had made that quite clear to him before he left for college. But, then again... he had left for college. He had basically disappeared from Beacon Hills. He'd thought it was good enough, keeping in touch with his mom and with Deaton to make sure nothing weird was going on. Checking in with Lydia to see if her powers were giving her any feelings of something being wrong in Beacon Hills. He had every intention of dropping everything and coming back the second he heard word that something was up.

At least, he told himself he did.

In truth, there had been times, there had been signs he ignored in hopes that they were false alarms. The unusual storms his mom had mentioned, the wild animal sightings Danny had sent him an article about. He had hardly heard from Deaton at all, which was more than unusual. But he'd ignored them. They're nothing, he'd told himself, too stressed out over his organic chemistry midterm to worry too much about power outages and electrical storms back home. I'm just imagining things, he'd thought, half way through an all-nighter working on his final for his human anatomy class. His heart may have been in Beacon Hills but his mind was in school, focused on his work.

Maybe he hadn't been such a great protector after all.

And now there were secrets. An undefeatable hunter with a silver arm, a vague and sinister "they" Derek seemed to be almost more wary of than the hunter. And something was wrong with Kira... but that couldn't possibly be connected.

Could it?

"I mean, it's not a good look on him," Stiles is still saying. "You'd think he'd have learned that by now, what with his killer girlfriends and all."

"Will you be quiet for, like, two seconds?" Scott snaps, and Stiles goes quiet, his eyes wide.

"Dude," he says, breaking the tense moment. "Are you okay?"

Scott runs a hand through his hair, leaning back against the wall. 

"I don't know," he says. His chest aches, and he's frustrated, so frustrated. In a way he hasn't been in a long, long time.

He can't place it, but something feels horribly, horribly wrong. 

Stiles' face softens, in that way he knows it rarely does with anyone else, and he moves towards Scott, carefully. Scott hasn't realized how tired Stiles looks, and suddenly he's not thinking about werewolves or hunters or electrical storms, he's wondering how many all-nighters Stiles pulled to get through finals week. Even now sometimes, he forgets that Stiles is only human. Only human and taking an overload of classes, forcing himself on frenetic study-binges worse than the ones he went on in high school, locking himself in carrels in the library for days at a time. Verging on manic from lack of sleep, from losing track of days and forgetting to take his meds, and then spacing out for days in a row just staring at the ceiling, unable to motivate himself to move. Danny keeping an eye on him, making sure he ate and at least tried to sleep. 

Danny had told him how much trouble Stiles was having with the stress. How hard he was overworking himself to make up for the horrible GPA he'd earned freshman year. How worried he was.

Sometimes Scott looked at Stiles and he still saw the look in his eye from when he wasn't Stiles. Like some piece of the Nogitsune was still there, hiding out and waiting, biding its time.

"Sorry I bailed on our marathon," Scott says quietly. 

"It's okay," Stiles says. "We'll reschedule." 

Something clatters outside.

"What was that?" Stiles says, and then they hear the howl. A long, strangled howl of pain, awful and unmistakable: Derek.

Scott sprints outside as fast as he can manage, Stiles not far behind, and as he throws open the door to the alley he’s greeted by the sight of Derek, barely standing, a bolt straight through his throat, another sticking out of his chest. Scott watches as his hands go to his throat, like in slow motion, a confused, almost lost expression on his face. And then Scott watches as he pitches forward and collapses to the ground.

Behind him, crossbow in hand, is the hunter. 

Their face is covered almost completely by a black mask, their body cloaked in tough black leather, only their eyes exposed, and one shining silver arm. 

“Stiles,” Scott says. “Stay back.”

“Derek…” Stiles starts.

“I’ll distract the hunter. You grab him and get back inside, okay?”

He sees Stiles nod out of the side of his eye, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re bright red, his hands claws, his teeth fangs. The hunter stands, unmoving, for a moment.

And then he starts towards them, and the hunter begins to run. Not towards him, though, away. He sprints after, just fast enough to keep pace, not fast enough to gain any ground. He doesn’t know how far he’s going, just that he has to catch the hunter. Has to stop them. Has to protect Beacon Hills.

His lungs are burning with exertion, a sensation he hasn’t had since his last asthma attack, before he was bitten, before all of this started. He’s running faster than he thought possible, but still, he can’t catch the hunter.

They round a corner, and he follows, nearly skidding to a stop as he realizes the hunter has stopped, too, just for a second, just long enough to assess the chain link fence in the way and start climbing, and now the hunter is halfway up and Scott is hurling himself onto the fence, only an arm’s length away from the hunter’s leg. He could almost grab it, almost—  
And the hunter is over the fence, rolling out of their fall on the other side and running again, and Scott follows as fast as he can. 

He’s not thinking about where they are, how he’s never been in this part of the city, how he doesn’t know what he’d do if he caught the hunter, how Stiles and Derek are back at the clinic and he has no idea whether Derek’s alive or not, whether he could heal from that, whether Stiles knows what to do to get the bolt out so he can heal. He’s not thinking about anything but his feet on the ground and his mom, his friends, Deaton and Lydia and Kira and everyone he’s sworn to protect. 

As they round another corner, he’s close enough to reach and graze the hunter’s arm with his fingertips. He dives, reaching out, and the hunter jumps, grabbing a fire escape with the silver arm and hauling themself up effortlessly onto the rickety metal structure. He jumps back up, quickly scaling the wall to follow, but they’re on the roof and running again.

He feels like he’s in a video game, throwing himself from one roof to another, barely catching himself on the edge of buildings or rolling out of a landing, and the adrenaline is enough, it keeps him going, keeps him pushing.

All he can think is that he needs to catch them. He needs to stop them.

He needs to keep this place safe.

His vision is a blur of rooftops, of asphalt and concrete and the dark, dark sky above until it’s not. Until there’s no more rooftop left. Just street, too high to jump. And the hunter, standing at the edge.

Not sure what else to do, he lunges, claws out, for the hunter’s throat.

The hunter grabs his arm, metal-on-flesh, grips his wrist and he meets their eyes. Hard, cold, empty eyes. But there’s something unsettling about them, something familiar, like maybe if he could see more of their face he’d remember it from somewhere. From a dream. Or a memory.

Then, he feels his wrist break. 

It still hurts, even knowing that he’ll heal as soon as the hunter lets go, but their hand is surprisingly strong, all that cold, durable metal exerting incredible force, and he can’t help but stumble under the pressure a little. 

The hunter sees the advantage, takes it, pushing him back so he nearly hits the ground, just barely catching himself with his uninjured arm, and by the time he looks up, the hunter is gone.

He steps to the edge of the building, looks down at the street below. But the hunter is nowhere to be seen.

. . . 

It’s almost twenty minutes later when he finally makes his way back to the clinic, his wrist healed but his breath still short. He pushes the door open, and Stiles looks up at him from where he’s sitting. His face is white, his expression worried, and when he gets up to walk towards Scott, he’s shaking all over.

“Scott,” he says, his voice tense.

“Derek?”

Stiles shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I took the bolts out, but he still wasn’t healing. I tried flushing out the wolfsbane, but… Scott, he’s still not waking up. I tried triggering the healing process but it’s not doing anything. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t…”

Scott takes him by the shoulders, steadies him a little. 

“It’s okay, Stiles,” he says, and Stiles nods.

He goes to Derek, then, lying on the table, his blood dark and caked on the skin around the holes where the bolts were, his eyes closed and his skin sickly pale again.

“Derek,” he says, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder and shaking him lightly, but Derek doesn’t respond.

“Derek!” he repeats, a little louder, and when he still gets no response he takes a seat in the chair Stiles was just occupying, and takes Derek’s hand.

“Come on,” he says quietly. “Come on, come on, Derek, come on.”

“Scott,” Stiles says quietly from behind him, but he isn’t listening.

He closes his eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and then looks down at Derek with eyes glowing red.

“Wake up, damn it.”

But Derek still doesn’t move.

Scott drops his hand and stands up, trying to steady his breathing. It’s not— he can’t— Derek can’t be dead, he can’t. There’s no way. Every other time, he’s healed, he’s come back. Every time they were sure he was dead. When Peter attacked them in the school, when the alpha pack fought them in the mall. Every time, Derek had come back.

He paces away, towards the door, running his hands through his hair.

It’s not possible.

It’s not— 

“Scott?”

The voice is barely a whisper, a grating, raw sound that barely sounds like his name, but it is, it is his name, it’s Derek’s voice.

He turns back around, rushes to Derek’s side.

“I’m right here,” he says. “You’re okay, you’re going to be okay.”

Derek shakes his head, and Scott can see him strain from the effort. His wounds still aren’t healing. It’s too much, too much in one night for his body to take it.

“You’re fine,” he says again, trying to sound as confident as Derek needs him to be, instead of as scared as he really is. 

“Lydia,” Derek says, and Scott thinks he’s misheard him.

“What?”

“You need to talk to Lydia,” he repeats, just before passing out.

**Author's Note:**

> endless thanks to [cindy](themaraudersaredead.tumblr.com) for providing the idea, [aoife](christineismyfavourite.tumblr.com) and [chuck](http://araherearagone.tumblr.com/) for talking things through with me while I wrote, and [chaz](chazkeats.tumblr.com) for moral support/proofreading/fact checking/being lovely
> 
> accompanying fanmix can be found [here](http://8tracks.com/fuckitfireeverything/who-the-hell-is-allison)
> 
> more chapters on their way shortly


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